Differential gears

this is so cool...

Did you actually know how a differential gear worked before seeing this? I didn't.

How a differential gear works.

JPost Columnist Caroline Glick: Prepare for war

A terrible scenario in the Middle East is becoming clearer and clearer. The radical, and rabidly anit-Israel, states are near the point of no return in developing serious weapons capabilities. This mostly applies to Syria and Iran, but these two nations may have armed the terrorist groups Hamas (working within Israeli territory) and Hezbollah (working in south Lebanon) with hundreds of scuds and tens of thousands of other missiles. These could decimate or at least cause serious damage to Israeli cities in an attack.

Remember, Israel is smaller than New Jersey. It's like living in San Jose and the people of Palo Alto have missiles aimed at you. (More on this here.)

So, unfortunately, Western nations have turned a blind eye to this situation, and Israel now stands alone to confront terror at its borders and beyond, in the case of Iran.

And it would seem that keeping the peace is fraught with complexity, but the case for war is simple: there is no way Israel can afford to let terrorists states acquire terrible weapons and give them to their terrorist, stateless proxies.

Peace movements are great - but only when there are two reasonable sides in a conflict. When one side simply wants the other dead and gone there is no peace movement or treaty that will do anything about that.

The brilliant Caroline Glick, at the Jerusalem Post: Time to plan for war

Quotes:

"The repeated abdication of responsibility by the Obama administration from preventing nuclear non-proliferation leaves it on Israel's shoulders."

"...diplomacy is no longer a relevant tool for preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Appeasement has failed. Sanctions are dead in the water in the Security Council."

"THE US abdication of its responsibility as the leader of the free world to prevent the most dangerous regimes from acquiring the most dangerous weapons means that the responsibility for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has fallen on Israel’s shoulders. Only Israel has the means and the will to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power."

"Syria and Iran have armed Hizbullah with some 40,000 missiles and rockets, including hundreds of Scud missiles and guided surface-to-surface solid fuel M600 missiles with a 250 km. range. This week, Hizbullah threatened to attack Israel with non-conventional weapons. Syria itself has a formidable chemical and biological arsenal as well as a massive artillery and missile force at its disposal."

"These are dangerous times. Iran, which seeks to position itself as a regional superpower, has been emboldened by the Obama administration’s abdication of US global leadership. Only Israel can prevent Iran from endangering the world. But time is of the essence."

Tragic floods in Nashville

Cinco de Franco

"Cinco de mayo! When the Mexican Army defeated the French at the Battle of Pueblo...Really? Who HASN'T defeated the French in a war??? If the Germans had a holiday for every time they beat the French they'd do nothing else...just sayin'..."
- from a friend

Terror as a way of life in Palestine

and remember, in Palestine, Abbas represents the more moderate Palestinian view of Israel.

Steve Jobs: Flash sucks and it's old.

From Breitbart: Steve Jobs attacks Adobe Flash as unfit for iPhone

In a detailed offensive against the technology owned by Adobe Systems Inc., Apple's CEO wrote Thursday that Flash has too many bugs, drains batteries too quickly and is too oriented to personal computers to work on the iPhone and iPad.

Flash is Adobe Corporation's platform for interactive media delivery over the web - it's often used as a video player or simple animation. Adobe makes money on selling the developer tools to people who author content, while us users use the flash player (usually embedded in a web site) for free. Much of the video you watch on the web is in the Flash format, though it looks like that may change...

Flying the flag of a country you don't want to live in

Victor Davis Hanson on the whole Arizona-how-dare-they thing...

"One either wishes or does not wish existing law to be enforced. If the answer is no, and citizens can pick and chose which laws they would like to obey, in theory why should we have to pay taxes or respect the speed limit?"

"...the anger at the U.S. and the nostalgia for Mexico distill into the absurd, something like either “I am furious at the country I insist on staying in, and fond of the country I most certainly do not wish to return to” or “I am angry at you so you better let angry me stay with you!” "

"California’s meltdown is instructive. If about half the nation’s illegal aliens reside in the state, and its problems are in at least in some part attributable to soaring costs in educating hundreds of thousands of non-English-speaking students, a growing number of aliens in prison and the criminal justice system, real problems of collecting off-the-books income and payroll taxes, expanding entitlements, and unsustainable social services, do we wish to avoid its model?"

"Finally, legal immigration should be reformed and reflect new realities. Millions of highly educated and skilled foreigners from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe are dying to enter the U.S. Rather than base immigration criteria on anchor children, accidental birth in the U.S. without concern for legality, and family ties, we need at least in part to start giving preference to those of all races and nationalities who will come with critical skills, and in turn rely less on the social service entitlement industry. They should come from as many diverse places as possible to prevent the sort of focused ethnic tribalism and chauvinism we have seen in the case of Mexico’s cynicism."

Read it all on Pajamas Media.

And you still think the U.N. is useful?

Worse than useless, the U.N. is a harmful distraction.
We try in vein to get Russia and China (a pseudo-dictatorship and a currently communist regime, respectively) to agree to sanctions against Iran. They say yes, then they say wait a minute let's not be too rash.

Now, the U.N. has put Iran on its commission on women's rights.
And, who better than a mullah-controlled regime that stones women and literally sends out the fashion police to watch for women who dress immodestly or too Western?

Hey, maybe there's an anti-terror commission we can put them on, where the venerable committee will watch out for nation states with nuclear ambitions that fund terrorism worldwide and kill U.S. troops?

If you think the U.N. is a valuable institution, then you have truly drank too much of the KoolAid.

Fox News: U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights

What's in a name...

Lawrence Zeiger thought through this one, and named himself after a liquor store:

And faux-intellectual John Leibowitz changed his name to...

click here.

As Hedley Lamarr says in Blazing Saddles, "Too Jewish."

And, is it me, or does "Lauren" sound much better than "Lifshitz?"

Is China About To Crash?

Well, not China as such, but its markets...

Marc Faber on Bloomberg: China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months

Investor Marc Faber said China’s economy will slow and possibly “crash” within a year as declines in stock and commodity prices signal the nation’s property bubble is set to burst.

Obama Took In Most $$ in BP Donations

Remember, Obama and all other liberals are all about the little guy, keeping it real, sticking it to the man, and soaking the rich so that they will pay their fair share of taxes.

That's why liberals must take in millions of dollars in campaign contributions from oil companies: so that they can tell the rest of us to hate oil companies.

Seriously, though, this is totally congruent with the liberal democratic threats to heavily tax the oil industry (remember 2 years ago when oil was high, and oil companies made a lot of profit).
This is simply how the system works - a lawmaker must make laws to regulate an industry because that ensures they will then get donations from that industry. It's the best way for that industry to influence legislation.
So the fact that one of the most liberal senators, and now president, took in the most money out of everyone else from a big oil company makes total sense.

And notice how, in the quote below, that even though the Dems love campaign contribution limits, they all know that corporations, or anyone (George Soros?), can work around this limit any way via PACs. It's a big lie that liberals and democrats aren't interested in big money.

From Politico: Obama biggest recipient of BP cash

Quotes:

While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they’ve taken from the oil and gas giant over the years.

BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.

From on high they speaketh...

From Victor Davis Hanson:
Collate the anti-capital rants of a zillionaire currency speculator George Soros, the green sermons from a late Ted Kennedy who stopped a wind farm from marring his vacation home’s views, a John Edwards of “two nations” fame constructing a Neronian Golden House, a Tom Friedman warning of the consumer habits that lead to a hot, flat earth from a 10,000 square foot English-style estate of the sort that 18th-century English barons built after successful careers in the Raj, the comic case of Jeremiah Wright moving to a mostly white golf course to dream up more sermons about “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” or a $5 million a year earning Obama — with all his expenses picked up by the government — lamenting out loud why rich people seem to want ever more money they don’t need. Some spread the wealth around.


Fully awesome article here.